Topics I would like to hear about:

[Kare]

Personally I like to hear at least one lesson about Berlins history.
And maybe you can come up with some famous persons? I am not really thinking about Angela Merkel, but maybe Händel or someone like that?
And of cause German food. ^^ Though I am German I hate Sauerkraut. But I love Leberwurst or Grützwurst and I was told repeatedly - and I even believe it - that this is stuff only we Germans eat. Supposedly even Rollmops is a deeply German tradition. XD

[_petiteclaire_]

I love Rollmops !!!!

but I thought it was a danish thing...

[Kare]

I am not really sure where it comes from, but I can tell you that it got a rather startled look out of an American friend of mine. ^_^;;

[Kare]

And thinking about food:
you totally need to include "Tote Oma" and "Kalter Hund".
The Former is a kind of Grützwurst or Grützwurst soup. It does look kinda disgusting, therefore the colloquial name of "dead granny"
And "Kalter Hund"... Well, you all know what a hot dog is and no one gets strange looks for asking for a heated pet. This would be something like a cold dog. I once asked a woman in one of our local supermarkets if they have it, and she indeed eyed me like I was asking for a dead pet! Instead I was wishing to buy:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bild:Kalter_hund.jpg
It's a rather solid brick of cookies, hold together by layers of chocolate, served cold. Eating this can be a real fight against the whole thing, but it's well worth it...

[Sprachprofi]

Any more suggestions? It's really great to hear your ideas. We're already working on an entire series of blogs that will cover famous Germans and overviews of German literature and other cultural aspects... the hard part is to keep it interesting for everybody. German cities are an easier topic in that sense because every student of German may want to visit them at some point.

I don't know about covering "Tote Oma"... I personally never heard of that. Is it a regional thing? We will release regional series soon, starting with Bavaria We're still looking for other people that take pleasure in presenting their region and its peculiarities, its dialect and so on. Kare, would that be something for you?

[Kare]

Literature? °-°
I am an open book-a-holic. My room looks like a library and I LOVE to read. XD Okay, I also started to read English books, because they are way cheaper to get, which among other things led to the strange situation of me reading Inkheart - a book by a German author - in English, but anyway: I am really looking forward to that one.
And you can most definietely make jokes about that one. XD
"Der Taugenichts taugt auch nichts" (personal statement: he gets everything without ever deserving a single of these blessings...), but what you plan? Schiller? Goethe? Hohlbein? Jelinek? Kafka? Hoffentlich nicht Freud. E. T. A. Hoffmann? Cornelia Funke? Vielleicht Fitzek? Oder Mai? Einen der Manns? Oder... so viele Möglichkeiten. o.o
Oder Schauspieler? Wir haben ja nicht so viele die es wirklich weit gebracht haben, aber vielleicht ein paar?

Erm... English:
It is a colloquial name. Or as Wiki stated: a reagional thing.
It's Grützwurst. ^^'
Or maybe you can present Sole-Eier, but I am not sure these things are even sold anymore...

And Cultural Stuff:
How about the Sandmann? Or... hm... seems I will have to think about that one a little longer...

Maybe you could even make one or two about how people lived here in earlier times. You know, like one of these interviews with ones grandfather, listening to tales long since past.

And Personally I wouldn't mind presenting my home town, but I though you are just searching for dialects. I am not sure what people around here are supposed to sound like. People told me I speak an almost dialect free German, sometimes drifting into Berlin or Ruhrpot slang... which is kinda strange since I am rather far away from there. ^_^;; But I am working on it. ^_^;;

[pseupseudio]

There are a lot of writers that would be good for intermediate level discussion. I'm not advanced enough to get much from the audioblogs, but I think you could do poem explanations like you'd do lyrics for songs.

Rilke is well known in america, as is goethe. You could do something on georg heym, or do a little bit on till eulenspiegel.

also everyone knows die bruder grimm, so that could be good material for study.

[Salivia_Baker]

Any more suggestions? It's really great to hear your ideas. We're already working on an entire series of blogs that will cover famous Germans and overviews of German literature and other cultural aspects...

I'm not really into German literature (mostly because it's really hard to find any author I love). But I did enjoy Gotthold Ephraim Lessing somewhat. We spoke about Leben des Galilei by Bertholt Brecht in school and I really loved it.


A little question: Do Austrians count too? Because Kafka, Freud and Rilke were mentioned and those are Austrians not German.
I think it's important to make a difference there because if you talk to Austrians and claim that Austrians are Germans.. well you won't make friends that way.

[Anh_Luong]

Hi,

I really love this program!!! You guys have done a fantastic job!!!

At the moment I'm listening to Newbie and Beginners series. I have some suggestions of how to make the lessons more interesting: (1) make us more curious about what happens in the next lesson. Maybe you can simplify or modify Sherlock Holmes or Harry Porter or any other stories? With those stories, once we start to listen to, we'll be addicted to them and then we don't want to wait for 1 week to hear about what's next.

(2) add more humors to your german conversation. We all love to watch Friends because they're so funny. Maybe you can copy some of their simple jokes and put them in your German conversation? It's also beneficial for us because we all want to be able to make jokes. Jokes make us more interesting.